Rewrite Our Story (Sutten Mountain, #1)

by Kat Singleton

“But I don’t want to just focus on right here and right now, Goldie. I want to focus on forever.”

“I love you.” I press a kiss to her forehead.

“I love you too,” she whispers as I walk

“I don’t care. We’ll make it work.” I slide my hands down her neck and shoulders until I’m grabbing her waist and pulling her body to mine.

“Pippa told me not to hurt you again. She said she didn’t want to see either of us hurting at the end of all of this.”

“There is no end ...

“It means I agree with her. I don’t want either of us to end up like last time. For neither one of us to get hurt, w...

“I love you, Cade,” Mare says, her words muffled by the fabric of my shirt. “I’ve loved you my entire life. I don’t plan on stopping anytime soon. I just don’t know what happens when our real lives catch up to us.”

“I love you. I don’t plan on letting anything stop me from loving you this time.”

There was something so heartbreaking and haunting in the way she looked at the house we’d dreamed of together. It was like she didn’t want it to even exist, like she hated me for bringing it to fruition. That night I was terrified that things were so damaged between us that we wouldn’t be able to repair them.

Watching her now, I know that isn’t true. She looks at the house now with hope. Before I can say anything, she’s opening the passenger door and hopping down to the gravel. She doesn’t wait for me as she walks toward the house.

I’ve loved her this entire time. While she was making her dreams come true, I was doing everything to build a house she could call home once she’d achieved every single one of her wildest dreams.

I’m happy because the only man who has ever owned my heart wants to spend forever with me. I’m sad because I worked so hard at creating a life that didn’t involve Sutten—that didn’t involve him—that now I don’t know how to intertwine our lives so we can have our happily ever after together. But I want to try. I have to try. In the years since, I’ve spent so much time comparing every other man to him. Cade slipped through my fingers once before, but now that I have him and he’s made it clear how much he wants us, we’ll just have to figure out the rest.

Of course I’ve thought about her dreams. They’re all I thought about in the days leading up to her leaving, in the days after when I wondered if I should just drop everything at the ranch and fly to her and confess how fucking gone I was for her. Her dreams were the only reason I never told her that I’ve spent many nights worrying that I’ll never be able to love somebody like I loved her.

“As soon as I read it, I wanted to change the ending.”

“What does that mean?”

“I went to Chicago the day that I finished the book. Mom booke...

even gave me her personal copy of Our Story with tons of tab things in it because she wanted you to sign it, and I flew to Chicago. I had nothing but a change of clothes thro...

“I went to Chicago. I went to win you back.”

“Yeah,” I finally get out. “I came to tell you everything I should’ve said the day that you left Sutten.”

“How could I not know you were there?”

“I was just about to ask the front desk to call you when you walked out. You looked so stunningly the same, but so painfully different. Seeing you again, it caught me off guard. I couldn’t move—couldn’t breathe—for a few moments. All I could do was stare at you and try to figure out if it was really you.”

“During the few moments it took me to work up the courage to talk to you, someone else came into view.”

“This man came into view. He had a nice suit on, he looked older, and you smiled widely at him. It was a familiar kind of smile—one that broke my fucking heart. He asked you something, and you nodded. He reached out and fixed the collar of your sweater, and it was at that moment it hit me that while I was still clinging to my love for you, maybe you’d let your love for me go. Maybe you’d moved on.”

“So you came all that way and never said anything?”

“I couldn’t do that to you. You looked happy. You were with someone who obviously fit in the life you’d created for yourself. I didn’t fit there, and it really hit me watching the two of you together. I wanted you back, but I still couldn’t give you everything. There was no way I could drop everything and move out there with you, and you’d just published that book and were killing it. It felt selfish of me to ask you to drop all of that and come back to Sutten with me.”

“I think you saw Rudy, ...

“Are you going to ask me to drop Chicago and move back to Sutten this time?”

“To be honest, Goldie, the only thing I care to ask you is if you’ll be mine forever. Where forever is spent doesn’t seem to matter as much

as it used to. I want you—wherever that will be.”

“Do you plan on coming back?” I ask hoarsely. Before she can say something else, I add, “Or am I getting a second shot at seeing you in Chicago?”

“I know that I’ll stop at nothing to figure this out. I’ll talk to my dad about the ranch once a little more time has passed since Mom. I’ll find new people to hire. Whatever it takes, Goldie. I’m not fucking up a second time. I’m not losing us again.”

“If that’s what we have to do for right now, yes. You finish that book and do what you need to do in Chicago. I can’t fucking wait to read it.”

“I was wrong, baby. I’ll make anything work to keep you. To keep us.”

“Last time we were here, we were both far younger. I was stupid and didn’t

know how to deal with my feelings. I didn’t know how to keep you and let you have your dreams. But this is different. My love for you won’t falter. I’m in it, baby. No matter where you are. No matter how long we’re apart.”

“Promise me this won’t be the end of us?” The look on her face is so vulnerable. The shakiness to her words about kill me.

“I can survive being away from you—even though I don’t want to—I won’t fucking survive losing you again. This isn’t the end of us.” “Okay.” She lifts to her tiptoes and presses a kiss to my lips.

“I love you,” Mare whispers. Tears now fall from her eyes. I wipe them away, wishing they weren’t there.

“I love you with everything that I am. We’ll make it through this, you hear me?”

“I know we will.”

“I love you,” I repeat, making good on the promise I made to myself that I’d make sure she knew how much I loved her. “The kind of love that lasts forever.” “The kind of love that lasts past forever.”

It hurts like a bitch to see her go. It already feels like a piece of myself is missing, but this time I have the luxury of knowing it won’t be long until we’re together again. I know that this time, this won’t be the ending to our story.

Sutten has always been my home. It always will be. And no matter what living in Chicago has done for me, I don’t want to be here forever.

“I have a lot of dreams, Cade Jennings. But none of them compare to the best dream come true of all. Loving you. Being loved by you. It’s the most special and real feeling I’ve ever experienced. I think I’m in a place now where the whole author thing can be done from anywhere—from Sutten—as long as it’s somewhere with you.”

“All I want is you. With me. Wherever you want, Goldie. I can’t be without you.”

“So what’s the ending going to be?” I pull Mare’s forehead to mine, speaking against her lips. “An ending together in Sutten seems fucking perfect to me.” Mare smiles. “That’s what I was hoping you’d say.” Our next kiss is full of the promise of forever.

“Nine years ago you made a wish, and I desperately wanted to know what you’d wished for. I wanted it to be for me—for us. I want to spend every birthday with you, be your every birthday wish, Goldie. Because you’ll always be mine. I want to be your forever. There isn’t a version of my future that doesn’t have you in it.” He taps his chest, hitting against his heart. “You’re my entire heart. My entire world. I love you so much that it feels like I live and breathe you. Marry me, Goldie? Make me the luckiest man in the world and become my wife?”

The moment he slides the ring down my finger, an overpowering sense of peace washes over me. Cade sucks a breath in at the same time as me, like we both feel it. The wind picks up, caressing my cheeks. In the same way I can always sense him, I can sense her. I can sense them. My eyes flutter shut as the wind delicately caresses my cheeks. Hi Mom. Hi Linda.

And as the man who I love holds me tight to his chest, his ring on my finger, I have this overwhelming feeling that it wasn’t fate that brought me back home. It was my mom and Linda who helped Cade and me rewrite our story.